


Common Lights

by Wildgoosery



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Constellations, F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildgoosery/pseuds/Wildgoosery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stars are different here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Lights

***

"And those," Suki continues, leaning close so he can follow the line of her arm as she points, "are the tsuzumi boshi." They're sitting on the empty beach, their toes buried in the sand. The sky is perfectly clear and the moon barely more than a sliver against it. The stars arc over their heads, their unwavering light reflected in calm, glassy water.

Sokka's brow knits as he thinks. No one speaks the ancestral language of Kyoshi anymore, but fragments still come up in conversation, mixed in with the common tongue. Suki has been trying to teach him, and so far he's learned a dozen words at least — "boshi," he knows, means "stars" — but the rest is unfamiliar. "Tsuzumi?"

"It's a kind of drum. See those three stars all in a row? That's the narrow part." She sketches the outline in the air with her hands. "Then it gets wider at the top and bottom."

He squints. "Hmm."

"What do you call it?"

"We don't call it anything," he says with a shrug. "We can't even see it where I'm from."

"The stars are different there?"

"Yeah. I mean, they're different here than they are on Kyoshi Island, aren't they?"

She considers the sky for a moment, her bottom lip between her teeth. "A little, I guess. I hadn't really noticed before."

"Like, that little cross-shaped one over there," he says, gesturing to a spot just above the smooth line of the ocean. "That's the anchor." He lowers his hand and drapes his arm around her again, the skin of her bare shoulders warm against his own. "Back home, it's up in the middle of the sky. If you go much farther north than this you can't even see it."

She settles into his embrace, his own body shifting automatically to better fit her curves. "You've been away from home a long time," she murmurs.

"Yeah."

"Before you came," she says, "I'd only been off-island twice. My father's family comes from the mainland, so we went to stay with them a couple times."

"When we followed Aang, that was the first time I'd been more than two days' walk from where I was born," said Sokka. "I'd never even seen a tree before. Or grass. If we hadn't had Aang with us, we wouldn't have know what to eat, or how to set up a camp in a forest, or anything."

"That sounds pretty scary," she says softly.

"It was," he says. He has nothing to hide from her.

She trails her fingers through the dry, powdery sand, leaving parallel valleys in their wake. "So you'd never been someplace warm?"

"I'd never been outside in my underwear," he says. He laughs a little. "I remember the first time Katara and I went swimming. Man, that was pretty great. I'd lived right next to the water my whole life, but I'd never actually, you know…gone _in_ it."

"That explains a few things," she muses.

He frowns slightly, suspicious. "Like what?"

"Like why you're always running around with no shirt on," she says. He pouts, not entirely in jest, and she lays a hand against his chest as she kisses the sharp corner of jaw. "Not that I'm complaining."

"I _am_ quite the catch," he says. The note of self-satisfaction is perfectly calculated, just enough to prompt a playful swat on the arm. He swats her back, and soon the two of them are wrestling on the moonlit beach, sand in their hair and sticking to their backs, their shouts and laughter echoing off the rocks. The night is pleasantly cool and their bellies are full of grilled meat and fire whiskey. For a little while they forget.

Later, when the western constellations have set and the lights in the house have gone out, they lay on their backs with their fingers entwined and stare up into the darkness. They listen to the tide and the rustle of palm fronds.

"It's really beautiful here," she says, quiet and a little ashamed.

"Yeah," he says. "It is."

"I just wish I could enjoy it, you know?" She sighs. "Stop thinking for a while."

"Yeah," he says again.

"It's an amazing place, but…"

"We don't belong here."

"No." She holds a hand to her throat, her fingertips brushing the collar of bronze, leather and jewels. "Fire Nation clothes. Fire Nation sand. Fire Nation water." She cranes her neck, and he can see the new moon reflected in her eyes. "Fire Nation stars."

He rolls onto his side, presses his lips to her cheek and twines his arms around her waist. "I'll get you home again," he says, muffled by her skin.

She turns her head to kiss his brow.

***


End file.
